


a bed by any other name

by Soulykins



Series: old dog, old tricks [3]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, odd sleeping places, sleeping issues, supportive Hargreeves, they're all trying really hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 15:54:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18101693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulykins/pseuds/Soulykins
Summary: Five has a habit of sleeping pretty much anywhere except seemingly a bed.Allison draws the line after finding him on top of the chandelier (it's dangerous, he could fall off!) and they have a family intervention for something Five didn't realize could be a problem in the first place.(Five could find beds occasionally in the apocalypse, clear the rubble off of them to curl up - but it was much easier to just tag any vaguely horizontal surface that was mostly clear of debris as a sleeping area and be done with it. The rest of the family doesn't really approve.)





	a bed by any other name

Five understood the whole talk about the random talking. He understood the talk about his food stash. This though? This he was much more confused about.

He’d woken up to being grabbed and pulled and _of course_ he would have lashed out and kicked at Luther, making the big lug stumble backwards and trip over a chair. And okay, Luther had managed to actually break the kitchen chair, but Five didn’t see how any of that was his fault. If anything, it was Luther’s for grabbing him!

But regardless, Allison had grabbed his arm before he could hop away from the mess and basically frog marched him into the living room for a family meeting.

Which was where he was now, glaring at his siblings darkly to cover up the confusion he felt in the first place.

He resisted the urge to childishly rub at his eyes and yawn. He was _tired_ and still didn’t know why he was being woken up for this.

“Okay, Five?” It was Allison who addressed him, hands on her hips and looking at him in a way that made him feel like a child getting scolded - which had him bristling right away because he _was not_ a child. 

But what she followed with took the wind right out of his sails in confusion, because she followed up with, “What is so wrong with your own bed?”

It had Five blinking. Was this - a trick question? He looked around at his siblings to see if any of them thought this was a weird conversation but all of them were just sort of looking at him expectantly. Well, except for Klaus who was looking at nothing and nodding his head slightly, clearly listening to whatever Ben was saying about all this.

“Nothing?” Five drew out the word, hoping that by the end of it the world would go back to making sense. But alas, that was far too much to ask of the Hargreeves on a good day let alone whatever sort of day this was turning out to be.

“Then why,” Allison asked, an edge to her voice that made Five draw in on himself just a little (Allison was a mother okay, she had the mother voice going and it was actually _working_ damn it all), “Have you been scaring the shit out of everyone instead of sleeping in it?”

Another blink. He slept in his bed! Didn’t he? Actually now that Five thought about it, he couldn’t quite remember the last time he’d been in it, but that didn’t mean anything. He stayed up for days on end fueled by coffee and spite. Why would Five’s shitty sleeping habits scare anyone?

He voiced that thought, though admittedly more biting than it had popped up in his head. But you know, had to enforce boundaries now before the family starting trying to do something absolutely idiotic like give him a _bedtime_.

It was Diego who shook his head, “Five, we don’t care about you staying up. We care about you just fucking sleeping wherever.”

“I almost shit myself the other day going into the kitchen and seeing you on top of the fridge,” Klaus pointed out, having refocused on the conversation while Five wasn’t looking at him.

“Gave me a heart attack seeing you _on the chandelier_ , Five.” Allison gritted out, gesturing with a hand.

Vanya was looking at her hands, “I thought you were going to fall off Dad’s cabinets last week.”

Five was giving all of them a mildly alarmed look. There were perfectly good explanations for all of those! He’d been tired and, well, he’d only needed a quick nap. Nothing worth trekking all the way back to his bed for. And if sometimes he forgot his bed was a thing that existed since he used his room more as a whiteboard for his calculations, well, that was neither here nor there was it?

But they kept on going. 

“You were sleeping at the top of the stairs two weeks ago,” Luther crossed his arms which only made him look bigger and more intimidating.

“I saw you getting down off the stupid taxidermy head, those antlers are _sharp_ and you looked half asleep.”

“On the kitchen table, straight out, like a vampire.”

“In the _bathtub_ , Five? You didn’t even have any blankets or pillows.”

Like a dam had been opened, each of them cited a weird place they’d found him asleep in. They complained about jumping out of their skins realizing he was right there where they didn’t expect it. They expressed concerns for his poor back and neck.

Well, that was one good thing about having his thirteen-year-old body back. He didn’t have the same aches and pains that were pretty much background noise to his life by the time he’d been found by the commission. 

“Okay okay,” Five said sharply, cutting everyone off, “Enough! I don’t see the issue, maybe you all should care about your own issues instead of where I choose to sleep.”

“Five?” It was only because it was Vanya who said his name so softly that he didn’t just jump away from this stupid conversation, and out of his siblings he actually held some level of caring for his sister (and if there was a part of his brain softly calling him a liar, that he loved all of his siblings enough to almost kill himself trying to save them, he could ignore it easily enough). 

He looked at her expectantly, prompting her to finish her thought. “Why don’t you just - sleep in your bed?”

He wasn’t about to admit to the fact that he forgot his bed existed as an option. During the whole stopping-the-apocalypse ordeal he’d woken up in a bed twice (once Diego’s, once his own), but neither time had he actually consciously chosen to do so. Though admittedly he’d woken up in his bed on more than one occasion since, even knowing he hadn’t gone to sleep there.

It was just - he spent forty some years travelling around and scavenging and yeah, sometimes he could find some kind of bed or soft surface, but for the most part if it was somewhat horizontal and vaguely clear of debris, it was going to be used as a sleeping spot. _Especially_ if it was raised off the ground, away from the ashes and other questionable things on the ground.

So Five just shrugged, “Just fall asleep before I can go upstairs, I guess.”

A lie. At Allison’s hard stare and Diego shaking his head, it clearly wasn’t even a good lie. Really, it wasn’t fair to make Five have to interact with people after so long along, his idea of what was believable and what wasn’t was clearly skewed. 

To be fair, it was hard to justify sleeping on the chandelier as just already being up there.

Five rolled his eyes, “What’s the big deal? Maybe you idiots need to be reminded what’s really scary instead of being scared of me, asleep.”

Luther was pinching the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache. Five was almost impressed - he hadn’t been certain that Luther had enough brain cells to rub together to even get a headache. 

“Can you at least try to use your bed in the future?” The largest of the siblings growled out, “If you want a proper reason it’s because you’re _in the way_.”

“Luther!” Came Allison’s sharp rebuke, but Five just raised his eyebrows and dared Luther to continue.

“You were sleeping on the kitchen counter before this meeting.” Luther told Five firmly, as if he wasn’t fully aware of that, “In the way if anyone wanted to get any food or make themselves something.”

Five considered that, then shrugged, “Yeah, okay. I won’t sleep in the kitchen anymore. Happy?”

“That’s why you have a _room_ ,” Diego cut in, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees, “Is it the room? We can get you a different room if you want.”

Five shook his head, tilting it slightly to one side and giving his brother a look which screamed that Diego was being unreasonable, “It’s a _room_ , Diego. It’s no more different or similar than any other room.”

It’s not like Five didn’t use his room, which is what they all seemed to be implying. He was frequently inside of it when he didn’t want to face or talk to any of his siblings. He worked on equations in there and stored food in there and generally spent a decent portion of his time inside of it.

He just didn’t usually _sleep_ in it, which is what they seemed to take issue with.

“Okay, clearly we aren’t communicating.” Klaus cut in, though Five was pretty sure those words were directly out of Ben’s mouth. “Five, why don’t you tell us why you aren’t sleeping in your room?”

Five bared his teeth, “Why don’t _you_ tell me why it’s any of your business?”

Klaus had the nerve to look vaguely hurt, which actually did make Five feel just a tiny bit guilty. “C’mon old timer. We all promised to do better at this family shit and that means you have to make some effort as well.”

Five tried to figure out what to say, but the issue was that he genuinely wasn’t sure what the issue was here. He didn’t understand why they cared if he slept in his bed or on the floor. So in the end he just sort of drew his shoulder up in a shrug, “I don’t know. I guess I just don’t think about it?”

Here’s the thing. Five had a room for thirteen years of his life, right up until the moment he jumped forward in time and ended up in a place where said room was completely and entirely decimated along with the rest of world. 

Now, Five was fifty-eight, which meant forty-five years where he didn’t have a room or a bed to call his own. Sure, he’d slept on the occasional bed during missions for the Commission, but it was mostly shitty motel rooms where honestly it was probably cleaner and healthier to just sleep in the park or something.

There was a solid portion of his brain that, when tired, forgot that in order to get a bed he didn’t have to go rooting around in rubble to find something soft. It was easier and a better conservation of his time and energy to just conk out wherever instead of having to scrounge up a goddamn blanket or pillow let alone a whole mattress that was probably covered in dust anyway.

These days it was especially bad since he had a habit of just plain not sleeping until he was too tired to care anyway. 

He missed Dolores, even though he knew it was better for them both to be apart and for her to be back with her friends. He missed her witty comments and occasionally caustic sense of humor. He missed her watchful eyes. 

If she was here now, she’d probably be calling him an idiot for deflecting and being defensive when his family was clearly just worried about him.

“ - ive? Five?” Klaus’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts and he looked up to see five very concerned faces looking at him (though he was sure Ben was looking equally worried wherever he was in the room). “Where’d you go, buddy?”

Klaus was the only one of Five’s siblings to actually understand some things about Five’s trauma. After all, Klaus had been soldier for ten entire months. He understood trauma in ways that Five was actually lacking in, having been forced to figure things out by himself for so long.

But no way was Five going to actually acknowledge that, so he brushed Klaus off with a quick, “I’ve been right here the whole time, idiot. But not for much longer.”

Done with this conversation, Five stood up to jump away. Or, he would have if Allison hadn’t reached over and clamped a hand down on his shoulder.

“Five, we’re really concerned about this. You could fall and hurt yourself waking up. Can you at least try with the bed?”

Her voice was soft and almost maternal in a way that made half of Five bristle angrily and the other half quiet down and mentally scuff the floor with one foot. 

Five shook her hand off of his shoulder, “If it’ll make you all shut up about it, then fine.”

He ignored the somewhat relieved expressions and quickly jumped over to his room to collapse on the bed. He was still so _tired_ since they’d rudely woken him up, so it took absolutely nothing for him to just curl up on top of the covers and go right back to sleep. This time _without_ an intervention waiting for him.

And if, when he woke up, he found that a blanket had been tucked over him, well. There was nothing more to say about the subject.

**Author's Note:**

> I won't lie this literally popped up in my brain as "Five is a cat, sleeps anywhere and WILL block the TV while doing so"
> 
> also i 100% did not read over this or edit it before posting it bc it was a trash brainchild i just needed to purge from my brain  
> so you know, have fun, ignore the blatant grammar and spelling errors
> 
> i WILL give five a stuffed animal of his own one of these days mark my words
> 
>  
> 
> me: i mean five would probably be fine with beds considering he was with the commission for presumably a few years before jumping off  
> also me: absolutely not five is a gremlin and probably slept up trees  
> me, right this second: wait did trees even exist in the apocalypse


End file.
